This is where I slowly back away from the table and consider no gaming to be better than bad gaming.
General Exalted Thread
This is where I slowly back away from the table and consider no gaming to be better than bad gaming.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
That's when you pull out your disease resources and ask him if he activates any charms.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Sidereals don't have hacking Charms," I said.
"Their entire Charmset is about hacking!" I was answered.
"This is a cute thematic statement but it doesn't actually help when you want to do espionnage as The Man From F.A.T.E. and you don't have actual hacking Charms to actually hack actual computers," I grumbled.
"Write your own?" I was told.
So I did. Unfortunately, I was severely sleep-deprived at the time (and still am, haven't slept yet), so it ended on a pretty crazy note, and I'm not sure the thematic thread follows through.
For reference, hacking is a Lore-based action, but Sidereal Lore is about prophecy whereas Sidereal Investigation is about drawing information from the world, so there.
Sidereal Hacking Charms.
"Their entire Charmset is about hacking!" I was answered.
"This is a cute thematic statement but it doesn't actually help when you want to do espionnage as The Man From F.A.T.E. and you don't have actual hacking Charms to actually hack actual computers," I grumbled.
"Write your own?" I was told.
So I did. Unfortunately, I was severely sleep-deprived at the time (and still am, haven't slept yet), so it ended on a pretty crazy note, and I'm not sure the thematic thread follows through.
For reference, hacking is a Lore-based action, but Sidereal Lore is about prophecy whereas Sidereal Investigation is about drawing information from the world, so there.
Sidereal Hacking Charms.
Dat Capstone.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Uhm, Sidereals don't *need* hacking charms, because in Exalted, many programs/AI's are spirits, and Sidereals have Terminal Sanction
Or they can just walk into the
That said, your charms are cool.
Personally, I had a system where DB's hack with Lore (electricity manip), Solars hack with craft (code) - half their computer charms are already copies of craft charms anyway, why make them double dip, and Sidereals hack with Occult and Bureaucracy. Not sure what Lunars hack with, but I'm leaning towards Appearance.
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
True in Heaven's Reach, not Modern.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, I should have specified that part. My issues were rooted in my Modern game.
.........I just immediately imagined a Lunar fluttering their eyelashes at a computer and going "Can you pretty please let me in without the password?"
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Even in modern, i'd wager you could totally find an air elemental who's electricity spec'ed to run
Eh, i just like the idea of Sidereals going in and dropping legal documents or kung fu directly on programs rather than using anything so declasse as a keyboard.
While Exalted hacking *is* Holywood hacking, I should note that a lot of hacking IRL still runs on the paradigm that the weakest element in any security is the human element and thus is mostly social engineering.
More thematically, the whole concept of having a front, a user-name/avatar, a handle online... it thematically goes well with appearance and there's a dearth of Appearance charms.
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So, if I already have the three charms in the Elegant Dance of Bow and Blade series, are those redundant with Shining General Puissance?
Dawn King's Strife lets you cross-apply Dawn caste Excellencies, and Shining General Puissance is from Thousand Correct Actions. It "[allows] use of War Excellencies to enhance attack and defense actions as though they were Excellencies for the appropriate Ability while commanding a Magnitude 3+ unit."
Dawn King's Strife lets you cross-apply Dawn caste Excellencies, and Shining General Puissance is from Thousand Correct Actions. It "[allows] use of War Excellencies to enhance attack and defense actions as though they were Excellencies for the appropriate Ability while commanding a Magnitude 3+ unit."
On the subject of taking Exalted to a more 'modern' feel, I still want to do that reinterpretation of canon Creation in the Age of Sail (i.e. muskets as a widespread military weapon, actual... well, sailing ships).
Partially because the only significant Fantasy settings I can think of that have an Age of Sail feel are all pirate-focused. And pirates can be awesome, but I feel like there's room for awesome somewhere else in that style of setting!
Partially because the only significant Fantasy settings I can think of that have an Age of Sail feel are all pirate-focused. And pirates can be awesome, but I feel like there's room for awesome somewhere else in that style of setting!
Sidereal hacking given the whole kung-fu thing they have going on should totally be 'summon up a representation of what you want and beat it up until it tells you what you want.' Obviously these charms are in War, as in 'cyberwarfare.'
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Social engineering is the most easily exploited weak point, because people are generally trusting. If proper precautions aren't taken (basically, educating employees about security), you can end up with a "telephone repair man" in your secure server room who isn't supposed to be in the building.
Or someone could call from "tech support" and say they need a secretary's username and password, and they need to take these steps to open up port 3389, and suddenly "tech support" has remote access to the secretary's computer.
Or they could walk in, say they're from tech support and have to do some things, hook up a keylogger device on the back of your computer, reboot it, and then proceed to remotely record everything you type.
Dawn King's Strife is for personal actions. Shining General Puissance lets you use your First War Excellency for when your unit is fighting in melee (in place of First Melee Excellency).
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
As written, I believe it is redundant. Your ST may disagree.
Sidereal hacking given the whole kung-fu thing they have going on should totally be 'summon up a representation of what you want and beat it up until it tells you what you want.' Obviously these charms are in War, as in 'cyberwarfare.'
Like I said, Terminal Sanction. Bureaucracy is where Sidereals do the most fighting, anyway.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
They exist. They also tended to be hunted down and forced to register with the government, because of the minor issue that is the ongoing war with the gods. Not to mention elementals in general tend to be disruptive, and people tend to hate net outages
.(Personal data spirits Sids have are likely to be demons in Modern, really, thanks to the Infernal's influence on the setting.)
While I can understand this, there's the pretty significant problem of treating programs as spirits in Modern. Namely, it supposed to be a modern setting. Our programs here are not generally even remotely thinking beings (unlike Heavens Reach, which can take the AI=spirits angle and run with it). Any sort of computer spirit/AI should be a fairly rare and unusual thing, so you can have a recognizable modern computer network. Admittedly, Exalts traffic in such beings as a matter of course.
Beyond that, Sidereal Bureaucracy themes don't really allow for hacking. It more has the theme of ending disputes. Occult works better for Heavens Reach, given its sub theme of manipulating spirits (and I don't mean making them do what you want, I mean physically changing them in some way). Again, not good for actual hacking. Sid Investigation (with it theme of having an automaton pull information out of thin air) works really well. (Seriously, these are the trapping for the Key, Investigations linked college: Innovation, hubris, automata and mechanical devices, books, libraries, medicine, curiosity. It fits ridiculously well.)
Actually, no. Sid War is... actually kind of a terrible set of charms from the perspective of having a weird theme and running with it. Which is to say, it doesn't have a weird theme: its just War, vaguely Sidereal flavored. Given the War set was generated wholesale for 2e (seeing as War didn't exist in 1e) this is not really surprising, but it is annoying.Sidereal hacking given the whole kung-fu thing they have going on should totally be 'summon up a representation of what you want and beat it up until it tells you what you want.' Obviously these charms are in War, as in 'cyberwarfare.'
(You could probably do what you suggest as an Astrology Charm of the Mask though.)
Its War keyworded, so only if you use Mass Combat. Thus as a general rule, Shining General Puissance is a trap purchase you should not make, because you will almost never use it.
(And even if you do use Mass Combat, there are probably going to be times when you aren't going to have 75+ guys backing you up, and it just stops working.)
That's sad because War could totally have so many great themes.
What is war? War is conflict. What is conflict? Conflict is struggle. What is struggle? Struggle is life. Charms that give you bonuses for ruthlessly and pragmatically expending resources and intimacies like tools, seizing things by force, etc etc.
What is war? War is conflict. What is conflict? Conflict is struggle. What is struggle? Struggle is life. Charms that give you bonuses for ruthlessly and pragmatically expending resources and intimacies like tools, seizing things by force, etc etc.
That sounds more like the Sidereal version of enhanced interrogation.Sidereal hacking given the whole kung-fu thing they have going on should totally be 'summon up a representation of what you want and beat it up until it tells you what you want.' Obviously these charms are in War, as in 'cyberwarfare.'
So Investigation. Or Socialize.
Or even Performance, given how much of EI is a performance art for the benefit of the torturer
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
See, when I was doing a Modern remake of Exalted I didn't bother to give Sidereals Computer hackign charms because they're Sidereals. You don't always get what you want, as the saying goes.
Besides, if a Sidereal wants into your system why would he hack it? He'd just write himself a new Destiny as one of the dozens of administrators in the system, contact the superadmin about his priveleges being revoked, get himself a password and then trigger Underling Invisibility Practice and go to town, before discarding the Destiny and waiting for Arcane Fate to take care of the rest.
Besides, if a Sidereal wants into your system why would he hack it? He'd just write himself a new Destiny as one of the dozens of administrators in the system, contact the superadmin about his priveleges being revoked, get himself a password and then trigger Underling Invisibility Practice and go to town, before discarding the Destiny and waiting for Arcane Fate to take care of the rest.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If there was such a thing in Modern, you could perhaps try it, yes.
What you describe sounds good on paper, but I suspect it would fail in actual practice. Certainly I've never been in a position where that kind of methodology would have been practical or useful; the requirement of time setting it up and the limits on the number of Resplendent Destinies you can have are only the first things that come to mind, the assumptions about being able to "contact the superadmin" (and it working at all) would be another. There are circumstances in which you could do this, yes; I doubt I've ever been in those circumstances.
One of the great dangers of Sidereal design is the tendency it causes in people to construct an elaborate story which justifies the Sidereal; of making up a pretty narrative and pointing at it as "this is what you should be doing." This is universally bad, because it fails to account for all the other stories in which a Sidereal player might find himself. Sidereal design, when it is good, actually does give you tools you can cleverly employ to succeed at your task, rather than encapsulating small narratives in single Charms and leaving you naked and incompetent when you can't force the world to conform to that narrative.
If a sidereal wants to know something they just use that one charm that summons a loom spider and have it find everything she needs.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This doesn't work if the information is either concealed or known by less than 100 people.
Efficient Secretary Technique is an enormously useful Charm in vanilla Creation, but in Modern, it is outmatched by a mortal with a smartphone.
Unless someone forgot to put it on the net.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
If it isn't on the 'net, there's a pretty good chance fewer than 100 people know it.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Uh. Actually, that fits none of the above. The closest you get is Presence, which is strongly 'Do what I say' (to the point the cap stone warps reality to accede to your demand). The real masters of EI in Exalted are the Abyssals and Alchemicals.That sounds more like the Sidereal version of enhanced interrogation.
So Investigation. Or Socialize.
Or even Performance, given how much of EI is a performance art for the benefit of the torturer
Sids don't need enhanced interrogation. They already know enough about you that they can get you to fill in the pieces.
In addition to what @Omicron said above, resplendent destinies don't grant computer accounts and records by default. You can make a destiny to appear as an Admin for X company, but there will be no records of you in their system, nor an account for the super admin to give rights to.
What you actually do is use your Dominion Oversight Bureau Resplendency (there are over a half dozen colleges you could use for this) to politely ask as part of an ongoing investigation can you have access to their system. If you have The Ultimate Document, you can even show them a warrant. You walk out later whistling. Or you make a Mast Resplendency, be the repair guy, and get them to hand over the passwords that way. Resplendent destinies don't actually make you something, they make people believe you are something. Your basically Sam and Dean Winchester popping up with fake FBI badges, but your better at it.
In theory, Efficient Secretary Technique is still useful in Modern for things like bypassing paywalls, ignoring the need for google-fu, local information that's not widely available on the net, the sort of thing that google-fu has problems with. There's also the fact that the five seconds it takes to use is generally much faster then most forms of internet searches (at least for more complex, hard to find information.)
In practice, the ST just calls for a roll, and that's the end of it. It's still useful, but at a diminished capacity compared to classic Creation, and often depends on an STs power to track applicability.